“I said, yield to your master.”
A bolus of blood-soaked spittle rolled from his perforated lips onto Epitadas’ cheek. The sickle blade was pressed harder against his throat.
“That’s enough, young man,” said Thibron, who rose and scratched his balls as if after a long afternoon at the theater.
“Yes, a boy needs to learn when it’s worth it, does he not?” chimed his comrade.
Having lost interest, the Firsties departed. Antalcidas rushed to remove the weapons, which the victor released with what appeared to be decided relief. Epitadas, for his part, glared at his opponent and didn’t look at Antalcidas at all. His face betrayed nothing but a sullen, smoldering hatred.
The other boy, whose name and affiliation Antalcidas never learned, turned and walked away. There was a moment while the adults were still in sight and Epitadas climbed to his feet. And then, before Antalcidas could move to stop him, Epitadas pursued his enemy into the woods, running at him with admirable stealth.
Antalcidas followed with a mounting sense of dread. He was just in time to see his brother insert the point of the sickle into the center of the boy’s back. It was a pitiless blow, inflicted with no warning or hesitation on a defenseless opponent. Epitadas watched with faint curiosity as his enemy, eyes gaping white, spun around, trying to reach the handle behind him. As this went on for some time Epitadas smiled, clapping his hands as if watching a dance. Blood poured trembling from the crook of the blade, spattering the amber carpet of pine needles. When the boy fell at last, it was on that soft bed. Epitadas crouched to watch his face as he went still.
“What have you done, Brother?” Antalcidas asked.
Epitadas narrowed his eyes.
“So it is you.”
They watched as a blood-colored bubble appeared at the victim’s left nostril. It seemed to grow forever until it burst and was replaced by another. A curious gurgling sound came from the vicinity of the wound.
“You’re not as tall as I imagined, stone-thrower,” Epitadas remarked.
Stepping across the prone body, he extracted the sickle and tossed it into the brush. Then he approached Antalcidas, coming to within inches of his face, looking down on him despite being eleven months his junior.
“You were saying something back there, distracting me when I had matters in hand…”
“Epitadas.”
“Never interfere again. Understand? Never.”
“Brother, listen-”
“I’ll take that as your word.”
The reunion over, Epitadas made off in the direction of the river. When he was gone, Antalcidas flew to Mesoa for help. As he ran, the odd thought occurred to him that Thibron, handsome and ingenious Thibron, so square-jawed and ideal, might be in trouble with his elders like any other boy. He also wondered just how many of the people of Sparta knew about the incident of the stone-throwing. What would his mother say?
Epitadas’ victim was not quite dead. As the craft of medicine still bore a whiff of foreignness for the Lacedaemonians, and was therefore regarded with suspicion, no physician attended to the boy. Instead, two veteran Spartiates put him on a table in a nearby house and applied a field dressing. This stopped the external bleeding but accomplished nothing more. The boy’s abdomen continued to fill with blood.
To inflict a mortal injury on a peer, even in the guise of training, was a crime in Sparta. Isidas the Ephor was summoned, along with five of the knights to apprehend the accused. Draping the gray locks of his beard back over his shoulder, Isidas leaned down to talk to the boy.
“Who did this to you, son?”
The other looked up at him with studied fortitude in his eyes.
“Am I hurt, father? I can’t feel it.”
“You are hurt. Who did it?”
The boy smiled. “I know what you’re doing, elder. This is a test. You want to see if I will bear the wound.”
The ephor squeezed his hand. “It is not a test.”
“There is no crime to avenge-I would have done the same to him if I had the chance.”
Isidas went on trying to convince the boy to name his murderer until he stopped giving replies. His last words were about going to tell his parents he had passed “the trial.” The ephor stood, a crease of regret crossing on his face.
“A shame to lose a boy like that,” he said to the knights. “And I believe his father now has nothing but girls.”
He turned and saw Antalcidas standing there.
“You-I understand you like to throw stones.”
Antalcidas shifted nervously, not knowing how to reply.
“Yes, elder.”
“I know you were there, son. Speak freely-no one will hurt you. You have my promise.”
Antalcidas took care to look the ephor in the eye as he answered, and to use as few words as possible.
“It was Thibron,” he said.
4.
The testimony of the son of a free-born Spartiate, and the fact that the dead boy was under Thibron’s supervision, were enough to bring an indictment. The Gerousia met to hear the evidence. In his defense, Thibron made a brief account of his service to the army and to the boy-herd. And while no one could dispute his record of excellence, a certain reputation for mischief-and rumors of private drinking-weighed against him in the elders’ minds. Isidas, who still had a bald spot where one of Thibron’s proteges had shaved hairs from his leg, was most adamant for the prosecution. In the end they voted twenty-six to four to convict, with both kings voting guilty.
Discussion over punishment ran well into the night. The prescribed penalty was death, but in light of the defendant’s distinguished pedigree, King Archidamus moved for permanent exile. There was no consensus when the elders broke up at last to make their way home, torchless, over the empty paths. The final vote was a contentious sixteen to fourteen for banishment. On pain of execution, Thibron was obliged to cross the boundaries of Laconia by the following nightfall. In such cases this meant the convicted had to leave right away, without a pause to collect his personal property or bid his messmates farewell.
Thibron’s trial and disappearance preoccupied public discussion for days. That Antalcidas, son of Molobrus gave the decisive testimony was the object of much comment, for his mother’s prediction that her son would grow up to be “the shame of Sparta” was not forgotten. The ruin of a young man as promising at Thibron, who came from one of the most ancient Heraclid families, might have qualified as such a disgrace. Questioned about this by Lampito in front of witnesses, Damatria neither confirmed nor denied the fulfillment of her prophecy. She still had plans for her eldest son.
Antalcidas took a big step toward that future with his appearance in the Plane Stand. It began with a chance encounter on the Eurotas, when his pack and a rival gang of sixteen-year-old Yearlings met on the shoreline path and refused to give way to each other. The customary manner of resolving such conflicts was to fight it out in a special arena: an artificial island ringed with plane trees and a moat, with wooden bridges on opposing sides. From time immemorial Spartan boys had settled their differences there, under the eyes of Herakles and Lycurgus, in any manner short of the use of weapons. Many a hardened Spartiate, if asked how he had earned that gouged-out eye or torn, fishhooked mouth, would boast that he had not received it on the battlefield but, in fact, in a boyhood scrimmage on the Plane Stand. Every young man was expected to fight there sooner or later.
The Lacedaemonians tempered the passions of the moment with a heavy dose of procedure. As leader, Stone was expected to conduct the sacrifice of a puppy to Ares Enyalios at his shrine near the village of Therapne. The animal had to be perfectly black, with no spots or imperfections; a regular part of the ritual was for each antagonist to disparage the other’s offering as unworthy. His counterpart, a small-bodied but bigmouthed character named Gylippus, made much of a few gray hairs on the underside of the puppy Antalcidas had stolen from a yard in Limnae.
